It boggles my mind, already heavily into boggled mode as the impeachment circus enters the Big Top, that nude pictures of Katie Hill should even be an issue, especially when you have a President who proudly brags about his nauseating sexual “conquests” with nothing less than full macho (insecure) locker-room pride and whose advice to “grab ’em by the pussy” remains his most eloquent, or at least most famous, contribution to modern political discourse.

This gives an extra edge to that bitter joke: “What’s the definition of a slut? A woman with the morals of man.”

It’s exactly as you say: Women are still judged by a supposedly exalted standard which when examined is based on the idea that men get to control, in fact, own, women. They’re judged on “purity,” especially in North America, where Puritan mores are deeply embedded in our culture.

You must forgive a man his little dalliances (abuse, rape?), goes the idea, because that’s just the way men are; but the unavoidable implication is that women are still men’s property and who wants damaged, or even used, goods?

Women are still expected to keep their mouths shut. I never stop mentioning, so I might as well continue, my shock at seeing a meme of Hilary Clinton prior to the 2016 election. It had been posted by a young male Sanders supporter and pictured her speaking into a cell phone, with the caption, “Shut the bitch up.”

Forty years of feminism, I thought, seems to have been for nothing. Powerful women are still “bitches” (a female dog, literally; compare “subhuman” and “infestation”) and that imperative to shut them up carried a not-so-subtle undercurrent of violence, because how, exactly, does one shut the bitch up when apparently she has no interest in doing so of her own accord?

I see this happening right now, all over again, with Elizabeth Warren. The Twitter and YouTube trolls are lined up at their computer keyboards like the elves in Santa’s workshop, chipping away at her credibility and character. Who’s she compared to: the unelectable Bernie Sanders, because anyone but a woman, although it’s framed as “there’s no money for her policies” i.e. “socialist.” And Bernie isn’t?

She stands head and shoulders above the other Democratic candidates (and I’m gay, if I thought Pete was better I’d damn well want to say so), she’s done her time in the trenches and she’s fierce in speaking truth to power. That’s the problem.

In a just world, Katie Hill’s ex-husband would be charged for the vicious act of releasing these images without her consent, the public would be shaming him for his violation of her privacy, and a woman would be free to have a relationship with anyone she chose to without it affecting her career prospects or being judged “sinful.” Which is basically what society is telling her. Make no mistake, this is about sin.

And in a just world, consensual sex between adults would be seen as natural, normal and good, and unworthy of comment, so that the very idea of shame in this context wouldn’t even arise. Ditto our frail, marvelous, imperfect human bodies. We’d have nothing to hide.

But maybe I meant “a perfect world.”